


Ohio Blue Tip

by stargirlshalo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Poetry, inspired by the movie Paterson, shy ben is shy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-16 20:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15445551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargirlshalo/pseuds/stargirlshalo
Summary: Ben Solo is a man of few words. He’s a bus driving poet, or a poet who happens to be a bus driver. He walks to work every morning, listens to Hux complain, and knocks back a beer at the bar every night. But this week, a new girl rides his bus. And for her, he can’t help but break his routine.A Paterson AU





	1. Paterson

**Author's Note:**

> this is my Paterson AU, it's one of my favorite movies. All poems are by Ron Padgett, William Carlos Williams, and there's one by Jim Jarmusch (according to Amazon). this work is finished, and I'll be posting two chapters at a time. kudos and comments are great!

**Monday**

> “You lethargic, waiting upon me,  
>  waiting for the fire and I  
>  attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty
> 
> Shaken by your beauty  
>  Shaken.”

The silent watch is what wakes him up. Ben rolls over in his queen bed, the left side forlorn and waiting for a lover to fill it. But Ben doesn’t have any time to dwell on the loneliness of that. It’s six forty-five on a Monday morning. 

His routine is unchanging, unrelenting, thoughtless—his mind can drift. He wakes up wearing the same white cotton t-shirt, his short sable hair falling in his face. He eats a bowl of Cheerios, the same soggy, grainy little “o’s” serving as his breakfast for the last eight years. His English Bulldog, Chewie, stares at him with doleful eyes. 

He packs a lunch—peanut butter, strawberry jam, wheat bread—in a Stanley Classic steel lunch box with a domed top. Ben’s had the same one his entire career. A clementine, because his mother calls once a week and reminds him to eat healthy, and a small bag of chips to indulge in. 

Every morning is just the same. He dons his blue uniform, shrugs on the Paterson Bus Driver jacket, and walks to work in the crisp autumn air, lunchbox in tow. The same route every day, walking briskly but not enough to break a sweat. 

Ben Solo is a simple man. He doesn’t ask for much—just that people don’t leave gum on the seats of his bus—and he wants for nothing. There’s nothing he feels has been missing from his life.

Until today.

_Another One,_ he writes on a blank sheet of paper in his secret notebook while waiting for Hux. 

_When you’re a child_  
_you learn_  
_there are three dimensions:_  
_height, width, and depth._  
_Like a shoebox._  
_Then later you hear_  
_there’s a fourth dimension:_  
_time._  
_Hmm._  
_Then some say_  
_there can be five, six, seven…_  
_I knock off work,_  
_have a beer_  
_at the bar._  
_I look down at the glass_  
_and feel glad._

“Ready to roll, Ben?” 

He looks up, a pale ginger man standing before him with a clipboard, ignorant to Ben’s avocation. 

“Yeah,” he says, quickly closing the notebook and buckling himself in. He notices Hux lingering, and asks, “Everything okay?”

Hux shifts, and the relief in his eyes lets Ben know that he’s about to get something off his chest. “Now that you ask, no, not really. My kid needs braces on her teeth, my car needs a transmission job, my wife wants me to take her to Florida but I'm behind on the mortgage payments, my uncle called from England and he needs money for my niece's wedding, and I got this strange rash on my back. You name it, brother. How 'bout you?”

Ben’s life has never been thrust in such turmoil. He joined the Marines at eighteen, though he never reached combat, but he had adhered to a routine ever since. In the end, he chose the life that was better suited for him.

Hux’s life sounded disorganized. “I’m okay.”

He does not keep a catalogue of those who ride his bus. His days pass by much the same; the same bus routes, the same stops, always the same types of people. The only reason he notices her is because she trips—landing flat out on her face on the stairs of his bus. 

Ben is up in an instant, rushing to help the young girl. 

“Ow,” she says, a pathetic little whimper. But she stands up without his help, dusting herself off as his hand hovers over her elbow. 

Ben notices girls. He sees, but they never hold his attention. They pass through his life like grains of sand through fingers. But this girl sticks to the side of his mind like a fly in honey. 

“Thank you, sir,” she says, noticing how his hand lingers uselessly near her arm. He is blocking the stairs, but he finds it takes a moment for him to step aside, to allow her to slip through his fingers, too. 

If autumn were a person, he would have found it in this girl. From her unkempt chestnut hair thrown up in a haphazard bun, to her honey colored irises staring up at him warmly with a hint of apprehension, to the dusting of freckles on her nose. 

Ben did not want to let her slip through his fingers. 

He moved aside wordlessly, allowing her into this second home of his. His heart clenched when she chose the seat just behind him. 

This was not part of the routine.

He drove, business as usual, though his mind was preoccupied with not poetry, but her. The nameless girl who he refers to as only Sunshine. Her presence had brightened the world around her like a ray of light. And those eyes—

Ben would never forget those eyes.

Strangely, he found that he would like this girl to stay on his bus forever. Like the child learning dimensions, he was finding out about a new one—time.

Time was not on his side. Sunshine stood up to leave after fifteen minutes (he had been counting) and stood at the top of the stairs. When he opened the doors with the unfamiliar feeling of a heavy heart, just after the crux of an internal argument with himself (don’t open the door, don’t open the door), she turned to him. 

There was a little mottled puce bruise on her chin that stirred something inside Ben he hadn’t known existed. She smiled brightly at him.

It was like staring into the sun. 

“Thank you,” she says politely. Then she clambers down the stairs and leaves him.

Ben Solo was utterly beguiled.


	2. Love Poem

**Tuesday**

Monday had carried on much the same, except he saw her in every flash of chestnut hair. His dreams were hazy with her honeyed eyes. He half hoped she would have materialized on the cold, empty pillow beside his head by sheer force of will. 

She had broken his routine. And part of him liked that—part of him was intrigued by the feeling their brief interaction sparked in him.

Already half considering passing by her bus stop several more times than necessary today, he grabbed his notebook and laid it beside his bland bowl of Cheerios. 

Ben liked routine. It kept him from getting lazy, gave him a purpose, and it gave him the precious time he needed to write poetry. He did not like the idea of abandoning his routine to chase a fleeting feeling that fueled his poet’s soul. 

But he was caught on the idea of her like a corner of cloth in a doorway. Her beauty was hard to forget. 

Last night, he had gone into the the basement, to his extensive collection of poetry, and picked out the same book he always did. William Carlos Williams, of course. He bookmarked a poem and left it on the counter. 

_What have I to say to you_  
_When we shall meet?_  
_Yet—_  
_I lie here thinking of you._

Ben had never related to this poem before. It struck him swift as lightning last night though, after he laid awake for hours thinking of the slightest possibility they would meet again. What would he say? He hadn’t said anything yesterday, he realized. 

How embarrassing. 

His lunch was the same—peanut butter, strawberry jam, wheat bread—a clementine, and and a small bag of chips to indulge in. His silent watch had woken him up at six forty-five, the same as every day.

He leaves his peach colored house with the baby pink door, Chewie staring at him from the window. He walks by all the golden and red autumn leaves, like an inferno burning through the woods. Nothing has changed. 

Hux still spills out a litany of complaints to Ben while he listens intently. He has no problems of his own, besides a girl he is trying to forget. 

He passes her stop three times that day, and he thinks this is a sign, when he sees her. She is wearing a large sweater the color of her eyes, and her hair is down today. 

She is with another boy. Oh. 

They climb onto the bus, and he averts his eyes. He cannot see her eyes again, or he’ll be seeing them every time he closes his. 

“Did you want to catch a movie with me and Poe later?” the boy was asking.

“I can’t,” she declined. “I need to go the library. Electrical engineering test.”

Ben studies her voice the way she might study for her test. A neophyte in the subject of her, he finds himself trying to understand the small inflections in it. 

So she was mathematically inclined. Pragmatic, he decides. 

“That’s disgusting,” the boy says. “Truly, I don’t know how you do it.”

“It’s just the way my mind works,” she says. 

“Yeah, but you don’t look like an engineering student.”

She laughs, a sound he wanted to imprint on his brain. “People don’t have to look a certain way to be interested in things. Different interests come in all sorts of packaging—like a surprise. Life is more fun when you don’t know what you’re getting with someone.”

He liked that—she was smart. When she got off this time, she throws him another bright smile and thanks him. No one ever thanks him, save for her. 

This time, he said, “Have a nice day.”

She peeks back over her shoulder at him. It feels like a triumph.

During his lunch break, he fiddles with a box of matches for a while. His secret notebook is laid open across his lap, naked and waiting. Inspiration does come in the form of this little match box. 

_We have plenty of matches in our house._  
_We keep them on hand, always._  
_Currently our favorite brand is Ohio Blue Tip,_  
_Though we prefer to use Diamond Brand_

Who is we? He knows who he wants “we” to be.

It’s toward the end of his shift when he sees her again. Her hair is thrown back up in another bun, wavy pieces falling out of it. He wants to tuck them behind her ear.

He grips the wheel tighter. 

She stands up to get off at her usual stop. She is one of two other people on the bus, and he knows it wasn’t for their benefit he drives sluggishly. 

As he eases to a stop, the pile of things in her arms topple to the ground. “Oh, bugger.”

How very British. He noticed the accent—how could he not? She isn’t from here, leaving Ben to wonder whether she was dropped headfirst into his life for a reason. 

Without permission, he bends down to help her collect her things. 

“I’m so clumsy,” she mutters. “You must think I just learned how to walk.”

He doesn’t answer, because he’s looking at a familiar book. 

“William Carlos Williams?” he blurts. 

Her face lights up. “Oh, that’s my favorite book of poems. You don’t happen to know William Carlos Williams, do you?”

The way she says it, so hopeful with anticipation for disappointment, has him nodding immediately like a trained dog. 

“I was just reading it this morning, actually,” he chokes. She smiles, a distractingly lovely gesture. 

“A bus driver who reads poetry,” she muses, standing up. “I never would have guessed.”

“You don’t look like you read poetry, either,” he points out, repeating her friend’s statement from earlier. 

Instead of chiding him, she simply laughs. He had made her laugh. “You never know what you’re getting with someone.”

She sticks out her hand. “I’m Rey Johnson. With an e, not like ray of sunshine.”

_Oh, but you are a ray of sunshine,_ he thinks. His bear paw of a hand engulfs hers. “Ben.”

“Well, Ben,” she says in way of parting, “I’ll be seeing you.”

He watches her go, dumbstruck, and then notices a box of matches she had forgotten. He picks them up.

Ohio Blue Tip.

That night he goes to bed clutching his book of William Carlos Williams poems, running his fingers along the last line of _Love Song._  


_How can I tell_  
_If I shall ever love you again_  
_As I do now?_


	3. Glow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shy Ben is shy, but he opens his mouth a little more today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for giving this story a shot! I appreciate all of you who commented and left kudos, I didn't know people would be so interested in a paterson au. I decided to give you a chapter earlier than I planned, so I hope you enjoy.

**Wednesday**

Was it strange to think too much of a person who thought too little of you?

There’s a fire in his walk now. He knows it’s her fault, that the short jaunt to the bus garage is quickened because of his desire to see her.

To talk to her?

He is pleasantly surprised to find her at the bus stop bright and early. Today she wears a snug black sweater, her hair down again. 

Ben can’t stop thinking about tangling his fingers in it, bending over to place a kiss to her soft lips—

“Morning, Ben!” she says brightly, flashing that dazzling smile. 

“Rey,” he says. He likes the feeling of her name on his tongue, the way it rolls through it like the arch of a wave breaking onto the shore. 

She holds out a plastic cup to him. “Coffee,” she explains. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I went for black.”

He takes it wordlessly, watching the way her lips curls. She’s pleased. If she finds his inability to articulate irritating, she doesn’t let on. He finds he can’t speak in front of this seraph of a girl; his knees turn to rippling water, his heart a conflagration working its way through his veins, his lips sand. 

Rey wrote on the cardboard sleeve of his cup. _For the poetry lover,_ it read. A smile was drawn after the word lover, a word he lingers on. 

Ben never wants her to leave his bus. He pictures her supple body sitting in his lap, arms looped around his neck as he drives this machine. In this fantasy, he overcomes his taciturn, palsied state and they speak as equals, and she allows him to be her keeper here on this bus as he allows her to be his in the real world. 

“How was it?” 

He jolts as her voice interrupts his reverie. He’s still driving, so he can’t look up at her beside him. But he peers at her every few seconds, his eyes magnetically drawn to hers. 

“How was…?”

“The coffee?” She pokes his shoulder, the fire roaring in his veins. 

A matchstick, grainy purple tip…

He peeks up at her for a long moment as he eases to a stop, drawn to the small purple bruise on her chin. 

He finally finds his voice. “It was perfect, thank you,” he says. “Are you all right?”

Ben subtly taps his chin, and her hand flies to it self-consciously. 

“I’ve been trying to cover it,” she admits, a sheepish smile on her face. “It’s a stubborn little thing.”

“You can hardly notice it,” he assures her. The last thing he wants is to make her feel bad about her appearance. 

He looked in the mirror this morning, and for the first time, he thought there were things he might change. Did she like big ears, or a wide mouth? Would she find the predetermined smattering of freckles and moles on his skin as fascinating as he found hers? 

“It’s so ugly,” she says. “I think everyone stares at it.”

“Nothing about you could ever be ugly,” he blurts. His face heats up the moment it escapes, his mouth slamming shut with the force of a trash compactor. He wishes he could throw those words away like garbage. 

But the effect it has on her—the lovely way her eyes brighten like a solar flare, her cheeks dimpling and transforming into a becoming shade of pink—makes his mortification worth it. 

“I suppose poets always find beauty in things,” she says humbly. 

They had been stopped for almost a full minute, he realizes. People are beginning to eye him impatiently, grumbling in their seats. 

If they felt the way he did now, as if he were riding the wisps of a cloud, they would cease to grumble. 

Unwillingly, he opened the doors for her to step off. It could have been his overactive imagination, but he thought she dragged her feet. 

“Later, Ben!” she calls cheekily before departing.

Later had always felt callous and noncommittal to Ben, the “maybe” of goodbyes. But the way she said it, later never felt so promising. 

At lunch, he inhales everything except his clementine. Rey teases out of him a creative whirlwind he had never been able to understand before. 

His fantasies shifted post-Rey, moving from her on his lap to in his sheets, the picture in his mind a vivid technicolor. She would curl into his chest as he wrapped his big arms around her, cradling her head and pressing sweet kisses to her brow. 

_When I wake up earlier than you and you_  
_are turned to face me, face_  
_on the pillow and hair spread around_  
_I take a chance to stare at you,_  
_amazed and in love and afraid_  
_that you might open your eyes and have_  
_the daylights scared out of you._

He finds himself counting down the minutes until he can see her again, glancing over his shoulder, acting out the part of a paranoid outlaw on the lam. 

The nerves ease when she skips up the steps of the busy bus—three hops up the platform, grinning impishly at him. She holds up her copy of _Paterson,_ giving it a wave in midair, and with a wink she takes her preferred seat behind him. 

It was then he knew, as clearly as he knew he would die one day, that he loves her more than anything he could imagine. He was a creature of habit and melancholy, but she was the matchstick which set him aglow and, in a white hot flame, illuminated only her. His world transformed from dark blue to golden, and she was at the very center of it. 

No other girls stood out in his mind—there were no other girls when there was Rey. He memorized the swell of her freckled cheeks, honey-hued skin, the atypical diamond shape of her eyes. Even the very way she walked excited him. 

He wanted her.

If only he weren't so utterly shy. When he was a child, his mother had to introduce him to other children on the playground on his behalf. He felt no different now; a man of few words, unusual looking, inherently private. That was who he was, and despite how she splintered his humdrum routine, he did not think he could undo that, even for her. 

He would wait, gathering his courage like the lamb attempting to approach a starving lion. 

His bus sputters. That makes him frown—since when does it malfunction? In all the years he had been driving, there was never so much as a hiccup. 

Rey had that effect on everything, didn’t she? 

He maneuvers the bus over to the curb as it dies, everything expiring down to the emergency phone. Taking a breath, being forced to speak and exert authority, he ushers everyone off the bus. Rey looks at him with concern, taking her lip between her teeth. He wants to take her plump bottom lip between his teeth and—

“What’s the matter with the bus?” a child asks him. 

Ben gives his head a slight shake, gesticulating so the child would understand to exit the bus. “Just an electrical problem.”

The child is worried. “Is the bus gonna explode in a big fireball?”

_Society is too influenced by movies,_ Ben thought. “No. But I think it’s best we wait outside.”

Rey is the last to stand, passing far too close to Ben’s person. She smells intoxicating—amber and ylang-ylang, he thinks, similar to what his mother wore when he was a child. He wants to wrangle the smell and tie it around his nose, though he would be rather much like a drunken fool if he smelled that all day long. 

“I’m in engineering school,” she tells him. She cranes her neck to look up at him, and it can’t be comfortable. He has to halt his own hand from cradling her neck, massaging out any cricks she might get from looking up to the heavens just to see his face. “I could look at it, if you like.”

He indulges himself and places a large hand on her lower back, completely encompassing the space. Ben doesn’t like being touched, nor does he ever assume other people like to be touched. But she seems, at the very least, to be interested in his friendship, so he allows himself this gesture. 

“Someone will come along to take this bus,” he says, unwilling to put her in danger.

Ben looks to the payphone, finding it graffitied and banged up, the phone dangling uselessly toward the ground. 

“Do you have a phone to call your work?” she asks. He shakes his head, a bit embarrassed. She was younger and technology was ingrained into her life. Rey pulls out her own phone—the glass is cracked in several places, and he thinks it might be an older model. 

“I get that,” she says, placing the phone in his hand. Her fingers brush his, a match striking against emery. “I wish I had the strength to unplug. I’d probably read a lot more poetry if I did.”

He nods, a pitiful motion to indicate his agreement. _Perhaps words would be more useful, Ben._

Ben does, however, join her on a bench while they wait. He prays he can string together a sentence this time. 

“You aren’t from here,” he deduces. It isn’t a question, but she is the kind of person to take a single phrase and spin it into a conversation. 

“I lived in London,” she tells him. “I have no ties there, really. My mother left me at a fire station with a blanket and a name.”

He blinks. Ben has never had the urge to share such vulnerable things with strangers. But he pities her, though he tries not to let it reach his face. He has a feeling she doesn’t like being pitied. 

As if she reads him like a book, she laughs. “I don’t usually start out with that,” she says. “Normally I wait until after they’ve taken me to dinner or something. Maybe several months worth of dinners.”

Ben clears his throat. That would have been a good segue into a proposal, (“Then why don’t you let me take you to dinner, and I’ll pretend I’m hearing it for the first time”) but she continues.

“I suppose you look trustworthy though. There’s something about your eyes that makes me want to spill all my secrets.”

“My...eyes?” He is taken aback. Girls usually were intimidated by the intensity of his gaze, but Rey looks into his eyes as if _he’s_ the one with the secret, and he’s buried them within the amber of his eyes for her to mine.

“What, no one’s ever told you that you’ve got nice eyes?”

He shakes his head, a rueful smile spreading across his lips, his long dimples creasing his skin. She smiles, too. 

“How did you end up here?” he asks, curious. What divine interference brought her here? God, or Cupid’s arrow even. It makes him think of a quote from Nabokov.

_If a violin string could ache, I would be that string._

“This book, actually,” she says, rapping her knuckles on Paterson. “It was my favorite. I had a professor at school in England my first year, a poetry class, and I’d go to his office hours and just gush about poetry. He lent me several books, but this one always called my name, so here I am.”

“Here you are,” Ben echoes, utterly in love. 

Her stomach growls, a ferocious noise that makes him laugh. She looks at him, lips twitching and eyes softening. 

“Hungry?” he asks, pulling his lunchbox into his lap. 

“Sometimes I forget to eat,” she says. “I love food, but I’m terrible at making it for myself. I’ll wolf down anything Finn puts in front of me, but if I’m feeding myself, forget it. Cheerios from the box for me.”

“Finn?” he asks with unintentional sharpness. 

“My roommate,” Rey says. “His boyfriend is also a terrible cook. We’re not allowed in the kitchen when Finn is.”

A knot in Ben’s stomach unravels as he plucks the clementine from his lunch and presses it into her palm. He closes her fingers over it, lingering far too long. She stares into his eyes, mesmerized almost. 

“Thanks,” she whispers, making busy work of unpeeling it. She eats like a ravenous lion, tearing at the sweet meat of the fruit with her canines. He’s never found messy eating so adorable. 

When she finishes, he unthinkingly reaches out with the spit-slick tip of his thumb and wipes the sticky juice from her chin. The blood returns to her cheeks, staining them red, while blood journeys to a very different part of his own body. 

“I’ve been told I eat like like a feral dog,” she says. His finger accidentally slips into the dimple of her cheek, and it’s so cute he just wants to put her in his pocket and take her home. 

He wonders how she would react to his train of thought, whether it would please her—did she, too, imagine what his lips tasted like, or picture running her fingers through his hair?—or whether it would cause her discomfort. 

She doesn’t flinch from his touch, so he takes it as a good sign. He’s even thinking about asking her out when the back-up bus arrives. He sighs, knowing his courage would only diminish from here.

His days had never felt long or monotonous before, but they did now. He arrives home exhausted, wanting to lie down with his dog and stay there for the rest of the day. But his mother calls, as she does every Wednesday at six. 

“Ben? Baby, how’s your week?” she asks without much preamble. 

“It’s been...a week,” he settles on. 

“Oh, no. Has it been rough?” 

“Not rough,” he clarifies. “Just different.”

His mother laughs. “Different! That’s a new word for your vocabulary.”

“There’s a new girl in town,” he says, regretting it instantly .

“A girl?” Her voice is sharp as a knife. “You met a girl! Tell me about her.”

“Her name is Rey. She’s an engineering student, maybe twenty or twenty-one, I don’t know—”

“Young. You’re just like your father.”

“Mother.”

“What does she look like?”

Ben finds that he had been dying to tell someone about her, tired of bottling it up or simply writing it down on paper. He gushes, he realizes, while his mother listens intently and asks for details. He can only compare her to autumn, or sunlight, or fire. 

“She sounds warm,” says his mother. “I’m glad she finally broke your boring old routine.”

“I like my boring old routine, thank you very much,” he says, meaning it.

“Oh, I know. But isn’t it nice to have just one anomalous week every once in a blue moon?”

Only because the anomaly is Rey does he agree. 

He comes home from walking Chewie and finishes his poem, feeling more hopeful than he did at the beginning of the day.

_But maybe with the daylights gone_  
_you’d see how much my chest and head_  
_implode for you, their voices trapped_  
_inside like unborn children fearing_  
_they will never see the light of day._  
_The opening in the wall now dimly glows_  
_its rainy blue and gray. I tie my shoes_  
_and go downstairs to put the coffee on._


	4. Water Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben can't stop touching Rey; Rey shows up on his bus suspiciously early; the angels are singing (and when I say angels, picture anytime Arwen is on screen in LOTR and listen to the pretty score; Ben has it that bad)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the positive response to this fic! it's largely introspective, but you all seem to be liking that! a small little chapter for now, but Friday gets a little spicy :)

**Thursday**

On Monday, she trips in front of him. On Tuesday, she drops her books in front of him. By Wednesday, the entire bus breaks down. 

It feels like a metaphor. 

His lunch is different today. He finds himself packing an apple along with his clementine. Just in case.

“Hi, Ben,” she sing-songs. It’s earlier than usual. He checks his watch—it’s barely eight. 

“Early start today?” he teases. 

“Oh, yeah,” she says. Her cheeks pink as if she’s been caught doing something bad. She starts to walk away when he reaches out and grabs her tiny hand. 

“Thank you for the coffee,” he says. Her hand is dry and cold, and he finds himself doing something strange. His hands are on autopilot, acting as messengers of his blazing heart. Traitors. 

He holds up her hand to his mouth, letting a puff of his hot breath warm her, rubbing it between both of his. For just a moment, his lips brush her fingers. He shouldn't have touched her; he might die with the heat of it, the flames of her fingers licking his, blue-hot. His body was composing a Madrigal in response to the momentary brush of her skin, blood throbbing in his very fingertips, arranging a tune to the constellation of her freckles. 

What was that quote again? _I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze._

It was just a moment, just one breath hitting her skin with the strength of a torch, five seconds of her fingers pressing into the meat of his flesh, but it was enough. 

“It’s nothing,” she squeaks. The person behind her is shuffling her along impatiently, so she rips her hand away and sits down. 

Now his hands are the cold ones.

He looks down at his cup. It was a quote from a Williams poem, he recognizes instantly. _Wherever his hand lain there is a tiny purple blemish._

Ben thinks about the little purple blemish on her face, the bruise that he had tenderly wiped away the juices of the clementine from. 

Mentally, he finishes the next line. _Each part is a blossom under his touch…_

He hates watching her walk away. She wears black and white, her backpack has strange, handmade white swirls on them. Like she did that herself.

Ben realizes he knows nothing about this girl, besides that she likes poetry and she was an engineering student, but he loves her all the same. 

He wants to know her.

Just as he’s about to close the doors, she comes rushing back. 

“Where are you usually around lunchtime?” 

He cocks his head. “By the Falls.”

A smile blooms on her face, those dimples he loves so much blossoming in her cheeks. “Later!”

He hates to watch her go, but he loves the way she skips away.

Ben has never shared his lunch hour with anyone else. He watches the falls, eats his lunch, and spends any remaining time working on his poetry. 

She is dogged in her inadvertent attempts to break his routine. For her, he is willing.

He hopes for her to show up, but tries to keep his expectations low. Ben waits twenty minutes, his heart beginning to sink, when he sees her ambling down the road. Her pace quickens when she spots him.

“Ben!” she says, her voice eager. She sits down beside him as if she belonged there. “This is a beautiful place to eat lunch, wow.”

He can’t help but smile at the childlike manner in which she takes in the Falls. “Are you eating here for my company or the view?”

“The view,” she teases. Then she rolls her eyes; he lets out the breath he had been holding. “And of course I wanted to hang out with a fellow poetry lover. I like to shake up the old routine once in a while.”

“Ah,” he says. Lightly, so she doesn’t know how badly he wanted to be the reason she is here. “There aren’t enough of those around here.”

“I know even fewer poets,” she says. Her nose wrinkles. “Finn and Poe can’t understand my little poems. They make me explain it, but I’m sort of allergic to explaining things.”

He perks up at this. “I’m the same way,” he admits. When he says this, she looks like she just uncovered a buried treasure. 

“They don’t understand how I can be an engineering student, but I write poems and paint.”

That explains the backpack. “Black and white is the theme today, I see.”

“Yes!” She gives her bag a pat as she opens it, retrieving her lunch. “When I own a house, I want to decorate everything black and white. It’s very classy.”

Ben likes the color black. He isn’t interested in the nuances of interior decorating, but he would live in a black and white house for her. 

He spies a notebook peeking from her bag. “You said you were a poet?”

She nods enthusiastically. Then her excitement dims. “Well, I’m no Williams, but I try.”

“Writing something bad is better than writing nothing at all,” he says. 

“You’re right,” she says, looking roseate. “Would you like to hear one?”

“Yes,” he blurts. He thinks about the poems he’s written lately, how they only seem to be about her, and wonders what she’s hiding in that notebook. He wants her to uncover herself for him. 

“It’s called Water Falls,” she says. “Two words.”

“I like that.”

A smile. “Water falls from the bright air. It falls like hair, falling across a young girl’s shoulders. Water falls. Making pools in the asphalt. Dirty mirrors with clouds and buildings inside. It falls on my roof, it falls and my mother and my hair. Most people call it rain.”

She looks at him expectantly, and he almost has the stupid urge to applaud her. 

“Water falls...that’s beautiful,” he says. And he means it. “It falls like hair, falling across a young girl’s shoulders.”

It’s beautiful, like her.

Ben's traitor hand reaches up and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, brushing the cartilage with a lingering touch. 

“If I ever become a famous poet, you can say you were the first to hear my work,” she jokes, slightly breathless. 

He wants to hear every one of her works. He wants to listen to them every night before bed, hearing them read out in her clean accent as she paces in front of the bed. He wants her to crawl in with him once she’s done while he sings high praises against her skin.

When he gets home that night, his eyes fly to the small picture of the Falls hanging in his kitchen. _Most people call it rain._

He finds he’s able to finish the poem he began Tuesday, a chorus of angelic voices mysteriously singing in his head whenever Rey's face swims into view, shrouded white with a celestial mist.

_We have plenty of matches in our house._  
_We keep them on hand, always._  
_Currently our favorite brand is Ohio Blue Tip,_  
_Though we prefer to use Diamond Brand_  
_That was before we discovered Ohio Blue Tip matches._  
_They are excellently packages, sturdy_  
_little boxes with dark and light blue and white labels_  
_with words lettered in the shape of a megaphone,_  
_As if to say even louder to the world,_  
_“Here is the most beautiful match in the world,_  
_its one-and-a-half-inch soft pine stem capped_  
_by a grainy dark purple head so sober and furious_  
_and stubbornly ready to burst into flame,_  
_lighting, perhaps, the cigarette of the woman you love,_  
_for the first time, and it was never really the same_  
_after that._  
_All this will we give you.”_  
_That is what you gave me, I_  
_become the cigarette and you the match, or I_  
_the match and you the cigarette, blazing_  
_with kisses that smoulder toward heaven._

His pen glides along the paper with ease, now that his affections for her are irrevocable. He finds himself calling it “Love Poem.”

Chewie will not go the way they always go to the bar. No matter how hard Ben tugs, and Ben is a strong man, Chewie doesn’t budge. So he is dragged headlong by this small, chubby dog an alternative way.


	5. Poem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rey isn't on ben's bus. he's sad. but that old dog has a plan for ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to post the last two chapters, but I haven't had a chance to clean the last one up. so here's the penultimate one, hope you enjoy

**Friday**

He delights in the thought of her, reveling in the memory of her scent as he rolls awake. He has dreamt about her leaning over him, her chestnut hair falling over them like a curtain, tracing a path down his face with her cold fingers with a saccharine touch. 

In the dream, she’s as enamored with him as he is her. She delights in the long patrician line of his nose, and she bends down to press a hot kiss to it, working her way down to his mouth. Her small hands span his chest, gripping his white cotton shirt with loving hands, their sweet breath mingling--because new love is honey-thick, ambrosia on the tongue. 

He wakes up with morning wood, fifteen minutes late. This has never happened.

His lunch is meager, his cheerios are plain and soggy, and he’s actually jogging to work. He is forced to drive the bus sweaty with numb hands from the frosty October morning, and Rey does not board his bus. 

This sensation is strange. He’s agitated, uneasy, and feeling intensely sad, the way a man should not feel about not seeing a girl he met four days ago. Was she sick, or hurt? He realized he would never know, because there would be no one to tell him. 

It causes him greater anguish than he's willing to admit. 

Being a bus driver, though a menial job, allows him ample time to think. His poetry was better for it. But now he realizes it gives him ample time to worry. By lunch, he’s concocted every scenario under the sun to explain Rey’s absence. 

He doesn't write about her today. It only comes to him when he can see her eyes smiling up at him. But she's branded on the back of his eyelids all the same. 

_I’m in the house_  
_It’s nice out_  
_Warm_  
_Sun on cold snow_  
_First day of spring_  
_Or last day of winter_

_My legs run up the stairs_  
_And out the door_  
_My top half here writing_

Chewie tugs at his leash on the way back from his beer, always on the verge of choking himself. But he stops in front of the laundromat, seemingly intrigued by the machines spin. 

“Come on, Chewie,” he says, giving his dog a good tug. He sits his ass down and remains there. “You dumb old dog, let’s go.”

The dog belonged to his father. Chewie drooled a lot, insisted on a nightly walk, and grunted whenever Ben so much as looked at him—as if it were offensive. He was not a fan of Chewie, either.

“I didn’t know you had a dog!” 

His heart trembles painfully as he hears that familiar accent, something of a Siren’s song to him now. She comes bounding to the door, fawning over Chewie. When she looks up at Ben with the same expression, he was suddenly grateful. 

“Yeah, I love Chewie,” he lies. “What are you doing out here so late?”

She bends down to pet the old dog, but cranes her neck up to keep her eyes on Ben. He thinks he detects surprise in her glance. Maybe she’s shocked he actually is initiating conversation. 

“Our machine broke,” she explains. “I’m stuck doing all the loads—including Finn and his boyfriend.”

This makes Ben inexplicably angry. Who are these boys, making his ray of sunshine do their clothes at this ungodly hour? 

_My ray of sunshine,_ he muses, smiling privately. Wouldn’t it be nice to call her his?

“You shouldn’t be all alone in the dark,” he says. He steps closer to the door. “I’m staying with you.”

She twirls her hair around her finger absently. The Police song, “Wrapped Around Your Finger” plays. 

Fitting.

“Don’t let me ruin your night,” she says, laughing nervously. He wondered, briefly, if she just didn’t want him here. Something in his face must have given him away, because her eyes widen and she says, “But I’d love you to! That is, if you wanted.”

He nods, tying Chewie’s leash to a pipe like he always did. They sit together in a corner, their knees bumping. 

He hopes he isn’t blushing like a schoolboy.

“You must be freezing,” she says. “Where are you coming from?”

Ben can’t help but smile; it sounds as if she’s concerned for him. “The bar. I go there every night.”

Rey nods, a faint smile still lingering on her face. Has he said something amusing, or does he dare believe she might be happy to see him. 

“No phone or car? You’re really living on the edge,” she jokes. 

She reaches out and takes one of his cold hands in both of hers. They barely cover it. He’s left breathless when she mimics his earlier sentiment by rubbing life back into his skin, her hot little puff of breath, fanning the flames. She is the Santa Ana winds, and he is the fire. His skin heats up, a raging inferno.

It takes him a moment to collect himself from the shock of it. “A phone would just be a leash,” he says.

Her mouth twists in a wry smile. “I wish I had a car,” she says. “But then again, then I wouldn’t have ridden your bus.”

“I’m glad you don’t have a car then,” he blurts. Rather than becoming sheepish or offended, her eyes warm. She’s still holding his hand. 

His eyes find that small blemish on her chin, the purple-violet bloom that bursts from her skin. With his thumb, he tenderly swipes his finger over it. “Though I admit, I wouldn’t have even known you were there if you hadn’t tripped.”

Her cheeks are stained red again, ducking her head at the memory. He likes it when she blushes; it feels like he’s marked her somehow. He would like to mark her with his mouth…

“I was baking cupcakes today!” she cries, a very strange change of subject. He must have looked confused, because she went on to say quietly, “That’s why I didn’t ride the bus today.”

“Cupcakes?”

She nods enthusiastically. “There’s a bake sale at the farmer’s market tomorrow. I spent all day baking for it. I think I’d like to own a cupcake business one day.”

He can’t help but chuckle. She truly was like the Santa Ana winds; blowing this way or that. “And here I thought you were going to be a famous poet.”

“That, too,” she says. “You should come. To the bake sale, I mean.”

“Oh,” he says. She actually wants to see him. 

“I’ll save you a cupcake,” she says quickly. She seems embarrassed. “If you want it.”

“Yeah!” he says, too loudly. Then, for some reason, he adds, “I hope I wake up. Today I slept late.”

“Sometimes I think something inside us just doesn’t wanna get up,” she says kindly. “I always seem to have that problem.”

He doesn’t tell her she was probably the reason he didn’t wake up. It was like his body knew she wouldn’t be a passenger today, and as a result felt it should wait for her. It reminds him of Sleeping Beauty.

Her laundry is finished, and he has to let her hands slip away from his. His mind briefly wanders, picturing his tongue laving across her skin right here, against a cold metal machine filled with her warm laundry, the scent of fabric softener invading his senses as he sinks his teeth into the sensitive skin of her neck.

“I’m walking you home,” he tells her. 

She raises her brow, but doesn’t argue. “You know, if you had a car this might have been faster.”

Doesn’t she realize he wants her all to himself, that he wants to stretch out time just to spend more of it with her? 

But for her, he would get a car. 

“I don’t mind,” he says instead. “Chewie loves walks, anyway.”

Outside, Chewie grumbles.

She doesn’t live far. Still, she shouldn’t be walking alone at night, defenseless except for two heavy sacks of laundry. He hands her Chewie’s leash and carries the loads for her, easily capable with his muscled arms. 

After a few minutes of silence, he says, “That poem you read me today was beautiful. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

What he should have said was, I can’t stop thinking about you. 

“Really?” she exclaims, bouncing with excitement. “Oh, Ben, that’s so sweet.”

For some reason, he blushes. “I’m glad you shared it with me.”

“I don’t seem to have any choice with you,” she admits, eyeing him playfully. “I told you. You just make me want to spill all my secrets.”

The way she says it heats up his core. 

“You can read one of mine if it makes you feel better.”

She grabs his elbow, eyes wide. “You’re a poet too?”

“I guess you could say that.”

They reach her apartment building and stop in front of it. She’s looking at him like he’s the best present she ever received on Christmas morning. 

His laugh is hearty as he trades her clothes for his dog. He averts his eyes from a pair of clean white panties he spots, or else he knows she’ll catch him staring. 

“That’s amazing,” she says, shaking her head. “You’ll come tomorrow, right?”

How could he say no to that face? “I’m there.”

Her smile is blinding, and she stands on her toes and plants a chaste kiss on his cheek. She’s tall for a woman; none of them could even reach his chin. 

She starts walking backwards, not-so-secretly pleased. He wonders if he's said yes to a date, or if she's waiting for him to man up. “Do you have a landline?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I do have one of those.”

She stops, charging forward again. Rey takes a pen from her pocket and scribbles a number out on his palm. It hurts, but it feels like she's branding him, and he likes it. He memorizes that number, remembers the sting of the pen carving the numbers into his skin. “Tell me got home okay.”

Because he doesn’t want her to worry, he agrees. Anything for her. 

As she walks away, she muses, “A poetic bus driver in Paterson. That could be a poem by William Carlos Williams.”

He mentally lists all the things he knows about her. She’s a poet. She paints, and loves the colors black and white. If her cupcakes sell well, she wants to run a cupcake business. She’s an orphan from London. Her favorite poet is William Carlos Williams. She likes to sleep late, and she eats the way a person who is used to being hungry does. She’s an engineering student. She likes Cheerios, too. 

That’s enough, he decides. With just one look and a smile, Ben was a goner, but these small details about her life are plenty to be in love. It was time he clue her in. 


	6. Pumpkin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the last part! this will probably be the last fan fiction I ever write, but it was fun! thank you all for reading, and you can thank little-starfighter on Tumblr for making a pretty aesthetic that motivated me to edit this chapter!

_I’ll be wrapped around your finger…_

One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand.

After ten seconds, Ben has to hide the phone in the fridge. He can’t call her now, at this hour. It had been a mere ten seconds since he had crossed the threshold, barely registering the cold, and marched right up to the landline. He hadn't even shut the door. 

It was too soon. He mustn't be too eager. His heart was everywhere—his throat, his ears, his stomach—and despite the chill, there was sweat dripping down the ladder of his ribcage from under his arms. Ben sits on the couch, leaning his head back against the wall, trying not to allow himself to call her until five beads of sweat had trickled down his side. 

He tries to picture her freckled face. It had been so close today--enough for him to count. He counts them like counting sheep, though the image is blurred in a dreamlike manner. She didn’t seem real to him, maybe that was why. How could he have been lucky enough to have an angel sent on earth just for him? Surely there were people more deserving of it. 

But his imagination begins to run wild. He recalls his fantasies in the laundromat, how he wanted to mark her body, use his tongue in ways that would have her moaning his name.

_You’ll be wrapped around my finger…_

He chuckles at his own joke. Then he realizes that five minutes have passed. This might be enough to compensate for the time shaved off after he sprinted back to his house (tripping several times). The numbers she had written were in danger of smearing on his sweaty palm, anyway. Though, he had chanted the numbers all the way back like a prayer. 

His finger lingers over the buttons for far too long. He stands in the cool door of his open fridge, physically crippled. She can’t know he likes her--what if he had been reading her wrong all along? After all, simply being nice wasn’t an automatic declaration of interest. Was she the type of girl who might take offense to that sort of boldness? She might decide he was too clingy, or grow uncomfortable with one-sided affection. She would withdraw, avoiding his bus and never seeing him again. 

No. He had to know where he stood. There was still the chance he could go back to the way things were, maybe even ripping his heart out and stowing it away in a jar if need be. Love wasn’t a permanent thing. 

But he feared it was far too late for that. Four days too late, to be honest. 

His heart trembles as he presses the call button, digging his nails into his skin and squeezing his eyes shut, as if that would make it less painful.

Her answer is breathless. “Hello?”

“R-rey,” he says. 

“Ben!” she exclaims. “It _is_ you.”

He frowns. “Who else would it be?”

“I answered the phone, like, three other times in the last half hour. I’m apparently very popular,” she says. 

“I just wanted to let you know I didn’t get eaten on the way back,” he says, toeing the floor with his shoe. 

“Good,” she says. A long pause. “That breed of dog you have is very popular. Someone might have tried to steal it. You know, there could have been an altercation. And you might’ve been killed.”

He looks at Chewie skeptically. If someone wanted Chewie that badly, you wouldn’t catch Ben in a fight. Hell, he would pay them to take him. 

“Right,” he says. 

Another pause. He doesn’t want to hang up, and apparently, neither does she. His heart is hammering.

“Well, I guess I’ll let you go,” she says, slowly. “Because you don’t want to wake up late for the farmer’s market.”

He chuckles at her ham fisted attempts to guilt him. As if he wasn’t going to be up all night thinking about her.

“I’ll be there,” he tells her. 

“You better,” she warns, with a kittenish fury.

He breathes heavily into the phone as if he were in a horror movie, his would-be murderer on the other end of the line. She can hear him, he knows that, because she doesn’t hang up. He’s working himself up, but it’s far too slow. He should’ve prepared better for this. Walked home slower, taken time to compose himself on the couch instead of thinking about his own perspiration. 

After two minutes, she hesitates. 

“I, um, I gotta go,” she says. It’s rather reluctant, but how long can she cling to labored breathing? “I can’t wait to see you.”

His heart bursts, and it was exactly the right thing for her to say. She understood him, however unconsciously. “Wait!”

“Yes?” Her response is out before he’s even finished the word.

“Rey, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

Breathe. Breathe. There’s a bead of sweat running down his side, tickling him. He hates the sensation, but it keeps him alert. 

“Would you like to go out with me?”

“I was hoping you’d ask me that,” she tells him. “They’re playing old scary movies at the theater tomorrow. I’ve been looking for an excuse to go.”

He’s taken aback. He hadn’t expected a date right away. He hadn’t even planned where to take her yet, waiting for her opinion. But the idea of spending the day with her made his blood sing. 

“Do I seem like a good excuse?”

He wishes he could see her face. Was she smiling, biting a pillow, or simply in shock, like he was. “You seem like the perfect excuse.” She pauses for a moment while Ben shoves his fist in his mouth, biting hard. “You know, it’s strange, but I think you could’ve asked me out the moment we met and I would’ve said yes. It’s almost like I’ve been waiting for you.”

He smiles. “I feel exactly the same way.” 

**Saturday**

On Saturdays, Ben usually walks Chewie. He sits by the Falls for a bit, but he spends the majority of his day in the basement. His extensive collection of poetry books are there, all lined up on his desk beneath a framed picture of William Carlos Williams. 

But today he wakes up with a purpose: he’s going to see Rey. And because it’s her, he doesn’t mind his routine being interrupted. 

His closet is filled with a few practical shirts, all in varied shades of blue. His work uniforms, his work jacket, the blue plaid shirt he picks out for today. He recalls how Rey likes black and white, and thinks what his closet might look like with the stark contrast of the two colors nestled between his melancholy wardrobe. 

Wrapped Around Your Finger is stuck in his head. It has been since last night. He finds himself humming it as he meanders around the kitchen to fetch his box of Cheerios. 

He bides his time by attempting to write poetry. Attempting. He’s too jittery to succeed in his endeavor. 

Too early, he decides to visit her. He thinks if he walks slow, he won’t be so eagerly early. But then again, did he care whether or not she knew he wanted to see her so badly?

His feet carry him too swiftly, as if they had minds of their own and knew who they carried him to. Every part of his body is urging him to see her. 

How embarrassing.

She’s in a soft blue sweater, her hair down the way he likes, beside the boy who must be Finn. He buys a sunflower for her while watching her for a minute. She’s bright and bubbly, chatting with everyone briefly. Her cupcakes are iced black and white, of course. 

“Is that the bus driver you like?” Finn stage-whispers as he approaches. Rey hits him, as if Ben doesn’t already know.

It’s still nice to hear. 

“Ben,” she says with a smile. Her grin shouldn’t provoke his heart to try to free itself from the cage of his ribs, but it does. 

He hands her the sunflower that reminded him so much of that very smile. She melts. 

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “I have something for you, too.”

From behind her she procures a cupcake with creamy white icing and black hearts over the top. It’s his turn to melt. 

“It was the best cupcake of the batch. I saved it for you specifically.”

“Well, I don’t see anyone else getting hearts on their icing,” Finn mutters. 

“Yeah, I can see that it’s really nice,” Ben says. He tries to save Rey the embarrassment.

“We’re almost sold out,” Finn tells him. “I guess we know now she’s a baker, not a chef.”

The way he puts his arm around Rey and squeezes her playfully has Ben aching to do the same. She quickly untangles herself. 

Poet. Painter. Baker. Cheerios, he mentally chants to keep himself from feeling inadequate. He knows her as well as he needs to. Soon, he’ll know her well enough to wrap his arm around her in that familiar way. 

“I’ll be done here in a little while. We only have one more tray left,” she says. 

“I can walk around a little,” Ben says. 

“No!” she cries. “Stay here with us.”

Stay with me, more like. He was over the moon. Ben quietly watched as she sold the remaining dozen cupcakes, transfixed. Finn eyed him knowingly while he handled the money. 

“You made a killing,” he tells her. “Over two hundred dollars cash.”

“No way!” She snatches the stack of money from Finn’s hands and starts counting. “This is a week of groceries out of the way.”

Ben had been right; she was pragmatic. Creative, but logical. 

“Don’t you dare,” her friends tells her, pointing his finger. “Treat yourself. Buy a poetry book or something.”

Ben decides he likes this friend. Rey’s eyes slide to Ben's, twinkling. “Too bad you haven’t published your poetry. That would be my first buy.”

“You haven’t even read them,” he says. 

“Don’t be modest.” She comes around the booth to stand in front of him. “They belong in the world.”

“You kids can go. I’ll clean up,” Finn says. Rey is already dragging Ben forward the way Chewie does.

They walk arm in arm, the way the universe intended. She’s warm against his side, and she would be even warmer beside him in bed in the morning. He’s suddenly tired of waking up cold. 

“I read online that the old Italian poet, Petrarch, had an early book of poems called ‘The Secret Book’. Just like yours and mine,” Rey says. 

“I didn’t know that,” Ben admits. “You just happened upon that online?’

She hums. “You have things in common with other great and famous poets, you see. So you should share your poetry.”

“Now you’re just trying to scare me.”

They watch a scary old movie in black and white, a bucket of popcorn sitting on Rey’s lap. She inhales half of it on her own, grinning wolfishly at him as she holds his hand with buttery fingers. He doesn’t mind. 

“You promised to show me one of your poems,” she says when it’s over. He gets the hint. 

The walk is far too long. Suddenly, he understands the merit of cars. 

They arrive at his house soon enough, and she’s already appraising it, mumbling about how if she could make him some nice curtains—black and white of course—and maybe paint his bathroom. 

“What poem do you want to see?” he asks, holding his notebook up, shielding the words from view. 

“I don’t know,” she says, plopping on his couch like she belongs there. “What’s your favorite?”

She’s stretched out on his couch like a lithe kitten, a stretch of her skin peeking out from under her shirt. Emboldened, he says, “I wrote one for you.”

“For me?” She’s taken aback. “Like, a love poem?”

He sits beside her—and because he can’t help himself, pinches her on the cheek. “I guess if it’s for you, it's a love poem.”

“Ben,” she whispers, almost teary. “Will you read it to me?”

Swallowing hard, he nods. “It was sort of inspired by Ohio Blue Tip matches.”

He expects her to be confused, but she says, “How beautiful. Did you mention the little megaphone shape the letters make?”

She understands him. And now he understands why he loves her already. “Yeah, I did actually.”

He reads her the poem, and she responds by setting his book on the couch, placing both hands on his cheeks, and kissing him sweetly. 

“I’ve been wanting to do that all week,” she admits. 

Because he’s not a man of many words, he says nothing. But because she understands him so well, she takes him by the hand and leads him to the bedroom. The door closes with a resounding click. 

In the morning, he wakes up with her curled against his chest, his arm cradling her head. His silent watch wakes him up the same time it always does, and he takes a moment to kiss her on the brow. He’s kissed every plane of her body—thoroughly. 

He gets up, tucking the sheet around her naked form but not before pressing lingering kisses to her furnace-like skin—and gets up. His Cheerios taste significantly better this morning, he notices. 

But right now, he has a poem rattling around in his head. 

_My little pumpkin,_  
_I like to think about other girls sometimes,_  
_But the truth is_  
_If you ever left me_  
_I’d tear my heart out_  
_And never put it back._  
_There’ll never be anyone like you._  
_How embarrassing._


End file.
